Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...
First, over at FHQ Plus...
- There is something of a time crunch for the two parties in Iowa to schedule the 2024 caucuses, but much of it seems self-imposed. There is a time they want to have that completed by and a point they have to have that set. Plus an additional note on Trump and 2024 delegate allocation rules. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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After filing with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott is set to officially announce his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Monday, May 22. The move comes a little more than a month since the junior senator from the Palmetto state launched an exploratory committee.
Scott is the first to strike in a week that seemingly promises at least one more similar announcement, but Scott's entry also comes at an interesting time. Donald Trump still enjoys a comfortable lead in the endorsement primary among Senate Republicans. However, the upper chamber in the US Congress is increasingly looking as if it may be a flashpoint of sorts in this Republican nomination race. And that may or may not be because of Tim Scott. Scott will enter the race with two Senate endorsements, both from South Dakota colleagues. Mike Rounds, FHQ has talked about, but Scott also scored the important endorsement of Senate Minority Whip John Thune over the weekend. And there is said to be a reservoir of support for Scott among those he works with most closely.
Moreover, Republican senators not aligned with Trump have been increasingly outspoken in recent weeks. First, Indiana Senator Todd Young unendorsed Trump. Then another member of the Senate Republican leadership, Senator John Cornyn last week noted that Trump cannot win a general election. And Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy followed suit over the weekend. Neither Cornyn nor Cassidy went quite as far as Young did in their comments, but they come at a time that gives Scott some cover as he announces his bid. No, none of it is explicitly pro-Scott, but it is anti-Trump enough, via an electability argument.
And together it all offers an interesting set of signals from among a group of the most high-profile possible gets in the endorsement primary.
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South Carolina Republicans convened over the weekend and narrowly re-elected Chair Drew McKissick. With both Tim Scott and Nikki Haley on hand and Donald Trump addressing the delegates in a video, McKissick turned back a challenge from Jeff Davis, head of a Trump-loyalist group in the Upstate of South Carolina. This was not a convention where 2024 delegate rules were on the table -- the winner-take-all by congressional district system is not one South Carolina Republicans are going to mess with -- but it was a demonstration of another state Republican Party battling on pragmatism versus purism grounds, something that has flared up in other states as 2024 approaches. That may not have implications for delegate allocation rules in South Carolina, but it bears watching elsewhere as the rules increasingly get nailed down.
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Harry Enten has another good one up about the comeback path DeSantis may take to the Republican nomination. He draws a parallel between where DeSantis is in the polls now to where both Barack Obama and John McCain were in 2007. Both obviously went on to win their respective nominations in 2008, but both needed early wins to help propel them in that direction. Of course, DeSantis' main competition, Donald Trump, is probably closer to where Hillary Clinton was in 2015 than to where she was when she was the poll leader -- ahead of Obama -- in 2007. And that matters as well.
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In a further fleshing out of an ongoing story, Tom Beaumont describes the tough work ahead for DeSantis-aligned super PAC, Never Back Down, in attempting to flex organizational muscle. Again, that effort is a kind of Frankenstein's monster, combining the grassroots strength and knowhow of the 2016 Cruz campaign with the similar try at organizing through a super PAC that the Jeb Bush campaign pushed in the same cycle.
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On this date...
...in 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney swept primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky.
...in 2020, the voting in the all-mail Hawaii Democratic party-run primary concluded.
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